take but little care of his remote interests. Charles seized the opportunity to extend his power across the maritime Alps, to acquire Ventimiglia, and to substitute himself as patron of the Guelphs and of the Papal interests, for that of the Ghibelline chiefs, who held the cities of South Piedmont. Charles was thus the first French prince who extended his views, his ambition, and his arms to Italy; a policy and a path so ardently followed by his descendants, and so productive of the most serious results to the destinies of France, and of its reigning family. Having regulated the question of Hainault, St. Louis next directed his attention towards a settlement with Spanish potentates whose lands bordered his acquisition of Narbonne. With the King of Navarre, who was his vassal for Champagne, he concluded not only peace, but alliance, giving his daughter to young Thibaud. He at the same time reconciled his son-in-law with the Count of Brittany. With the King of Aragon Louis came to the most sensible of agreements. Each monarch agreed to give up whatever pretensions they might have in countries lying on the side of the Pyrenees opposite to them. The French had claims on Barcelona-the Aragonese, on Narbonne, Beziers, and Toulouse. It was settled that the Pyrenees should be their frontier; and this compact was sealed by the marriage of Philip, son of Louis, and afterwards Philip the Bold, with Isabella, daughter of the King of Aragon. A more difficult task in the hands of the peacemaking king, was the conclusion of a solid and definitive peace with England. Henry had previously rejected his offers; but that monarch was now in the hands of his barons, who had curtailed his powers, and assumed many functions of the government; so that the English king might not be supposed to be anxious about foreign claims and possessions, concerning which, moreover, his barons CHAP. VI. CHAP. VI. were known to be indifferent. Henry the Third had come to Vincennes to visit Louis, who sympathised with his fallen state, and no doubt promised to aid, as far as was possible, in the recovery of his royal power. Louis's offers were, therefore, more favourably received now, and a treaty was concluded in 1259. According to its tenor the French king yielded to Henry all the fiefs and domains which he possessed in the bishoprics and cities of Limoges, Cahors, and Perigord, except the homage of his brother, and whatever he could not dispose of by letters. But these he was bound to purchase and give up within a year. Louis was, moreover, to pay the yearly value of Agen, until it should fall to the Crown, when he was to transfer it to England. After the death of Alphonso Count of Poitou, the lands that he held in Xaintonge beyond the Charente were to be ceded, or a money value paid for them. The same was to be observed with respect to the land he held in Cahors, provided it could be proved that the first grant came from the King of England. The King of France, moreover, was to pay for the support of 500 knights for two years. All this is very far from a complete cession of the provinces immediately north of the Garonne. When portions of France were formerly held by the Plantagenets of the Capets, the sovereignty was complete in the lands of the royal vassal, the homage merely nominal. But now the suzerain kept the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the regale of all bishopricks, maintained the right of appeal to the royal court, contrived to keep his seneschals in the provinces nominally ceded. And in fact all that Henry acquired by these concessions, in return for which he waived the claims of his family upon Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou, was a certain amount of annual income, stipulated but not paid. As to the Limousin and Perigord, they were held by counts, who nominally transferred a kind of allegi ance, but between whom and the suzerain was left no place for the authority of the sovereign vassal. French historians allege that the populations of these provinces were so incensed at Louis' ceding them to the English that, after his coronation, they refused to celebrate the fête of St. Louis. This was gratuitously severe and unjust on their part, for the provinces were not ceded, nor apparently did any change take place worth noticing; and after the death of the Count and Countess of Poitou and Toulouse, the lands of Agen and Xaintonge were demanded and redemanded for a long time, in vain, by Henry and by Edward. Perhaps the pious and just Louis thought he was making a fair and honest restoration, but his lawyer councillors took care that this should not be the case. Whilst the king thus terminated all differences between himself and foreign princes, he at the same time made equally strenuous efforts to put an end to enmities between his neighbours. A king so bent on peace could not tolerate the right or the habit of private war, which still continued within his dominions. He had sought to limit it by his edict of forty days' truce, or quarantaine le roi. In 1257 he learnt that the prohibitions of this edict were completely set at nought in Auvergne. He instantly ordered the seneschal and bishops to look to it, and seized the opportunity of issuing an edict to forbid private war throughout the kingdom. Trial by single combat was a kind of private war, though ordained by courts of justice and presided over by the authorities of the district. To abolish this solemn custom was a more difficult and complicated matter. But even this St. Louis undertook in 1260, and he prepared an edict for the purpose, with the legists of his parliament. It for. bade judical combat, and commanded that in all cases where it prevailed, proof by witnesses should be substituted. This, in itself a revolution, required a remodelling of the whole criminal jurisdiction and law. And CHAP. VI. 249 Louis achieved later in the ordinances known name of his Etablissements. was not merely by their right of appealing to arms, her in private war or legal battle, that the feudal áristocracy set freedom and justice at defiance. They were supreme in their own courts, and had the power of awarding even death. St. Louis shrunk from interfering with such seignorial privileges by an edict; but he seized a memorable occasion of showing that the king's justice was as paramount as it was equitable and humane, and that the highest should not set it at defiance. The house of Coucy was one of the first in France, as, indeed, the ruins of its castle still show. Enguerrand had succeeded to the title and possessions, when a very young man, in 1250. He was much addicted to the chase and chary of its privileges. It happened that three young Flemings, well connected and of good families, who were pursuing their studies at a Benedictine abbey near Laon, were engaged in the sport of killing rabbits with bow and arrow, and unconsciously pursued their game within the precincts or the preserves of Coucy. Seized and brought to the castle, the young lord, without inquiry, ordered them instantly to be hanged. The order was executed. The Benedictine abbot, shocked at such an occurrence, informed of the fact Gille Le Brun, constable of France, who was a relative of one of the victims. The king was instantly told, and he summoned De Coucy to appear before him in council. Enguerrand came to Paris, but demanded to be tried by the Court of Peers. This was denied him, and apparently without much justice, on the plea that he was not a peer or a baron, but held Couci as a fief of the diocese of Rheims. As lords of Boves, near Amiens, the De Coucys had been barons, but were no longer so, it was alleged. Such chicane showed the influence of legists in the council of St. Louis. They caused Enguerrand to be arrested and committed to the donjon of the Louvre. De Coucy was allied to all the great families of the kingdom, the chiefs of whom came and besought the king to punish the young noble with a fine and dismiss him. But Louis declared that he was worthy of death for so wanton a murder of three guiltless youths, and that he should be punished according to his merits. However, the king summoned the baronage of France to assemble. When thus publicly arraigned, Enguerrand had no means of disproving the murder, but he appealed to a trial by battle. The king had only abolished this as yet in counties of his own jurisdiction. But he now denied it in the case of De Coucy, saying, that compelling christians, widows, and humble people to trial by battle, was a mockery of justice. The Duke of Brittany, the King of Navarre, and others then interfered; but Louis would not listen to them and withdrew. The barons then took counsel, and seeing the determination of the king, advised the accused to throw himself on the royal mercy. They also did the same, and instead of expostulating, merely demanded grace. Louis was thus induced to spare the life of Enguerrand, which he at first seemed resolved to take, but he condemned him to a fine of 1000 livres, and to a loss of his privilege of dispensing justice and keeping game preserves. He was to go to the Holy Land for three years. A nobleman, a relative of the De Coucy, was heard to exclaim, on learning the judgment, that the king had nothing to do but to hang all his barons. Louis called the speaker to him and told him, that he would hang no baron, but would not fail to punish them according to the crime they might be guilty of. With De Coucy's fine Louis built the hospital of Pontoise and the Cordelier's Church in Paris. Enguerrand, to be dispensed from proceeding to the Holy Land, paid 12,000 livres more to the bishop of Evreux. The keen and natural sense of justice, felt by Louis, did not extend to those complications of politics, in CHAP. .VI. |